


Destruction

by rosensilence



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Couch Cuddles, Grand Marshal Armitage Hux, Hux is in denial, M/M, Post TLJ, TLJ Compliant, kylo is almost functional, references to canon compliant violence, this is totally inspired by that burn this promo photo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-10-19 01:59:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17592548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosensilence/pseuds/rosensilence
Summary: Armitage Hux has a lot of work to do, but his night is interrupted by a returning Kylo Ren.  It's six months since Ren became the Supreme Leader and many things have changed between them.  Ren is far more aware of these changes than Hux is.





	Destruction

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to StaticRaining for the read-through/beta

Hux didn’t even look up from his datapad when he reached his quarters. He merely slammed his left hand against the door sensor—the datapad firmly held in his right—and walked right in, his eyes still determinedly fixated on yet another financial report. Later he’d realize that he should’ve noticed that the lights were on already and that his preoccupation with the cost of the repairs of the Supremacy could have meant that his death was lurking in the shadows, but at that moment all he saw was numbers.

He walked into the living space of his quarters, more from memory than from sight, and intended to spend the majority of his free-time going through the reports while sitting on his ice blue sofa. If he was going to go without sleep—again—then he at least wanted to be comfortable while he did so. Not that he’d be able to get much sleep. He never did when Ren was away.

Ren had been an inconvenience when Hux had hated him. Now that they were… whatever they were, Ren was an inconvenience of an entirely different sort.

But thinking of Ren wouldn’t help those reports get read, so Hux tried to push thoughts of him from his mind. Ren was a hard man to shake, however. It was infuriating how someone could get under your skin and take up residency in a part of you. It had been easier when they hated each other. That had been honest and simple to understand. But this…

Hux groaned and ran a hand over his face. He needed a drink before he settled down with more of these numbers. They had so many zeroes that they had already began to swim before his eyes.

He’d just turned away from the sofa and towards the cabinet in the corner where he kept a bottle of hard liquor (Chandrilian whiskey Ren had managed to procure from kriff knows where) when he heard it.

“Hux?’

The voice was soft and thick with sleep, but it was no less recognizable for it.

“Ren?”

Hux walked around the sofa and there he was; Kylo Ren, sprawled across the soft upholstery like it had been made for him. He’d removed his heavy boots and his heavy outer robes at least, leaving him in only a pair of slacks and a shirt.

He looked comfortable. Peaceful. Hux glared down at the reports that had accumulated in his inbox and envied Ren’s calmness.

“The mission was a success, I presume?”

“It was,” Ren said. He sounded more awake already. “The insurgence has been taken care of and another planet is now ours. All hail the mighty First Order and its glorious Supreme Leader.”

“You’re not supposed to call yourself glorious, Ren.”

“Someone has to.”

Hux smirked despite himself. Ren really was calmer and happier now. Supreme Leader or not, a beast like Ren was not meant to be caged in meetings and financial reports; he needed to escape to the battlefield. Ever since Ren had started leading the campaigns to crush the little sparks of resistance against them that occasionally flared up, Hux’s life had become easier. Those early days, when Hux had tried to make Ren into the kind of Supreme Leader he could never be, were just painful memories now. Ren had his role and Hux had his. It worked.

It was the closest thing to contentment Hux had ever felt.

“Any casualties on our side?”

Ren frowned. “I did write a report, you know.”

Hux scrolled through the reports on his datapad and sure enough, there it was. There were fifty-six reports ahead of it, however. “I’d rather hear it from you,” Hux lied.

“We lost seven Stormtroopers.”

“How many did they lose?”

“Everyone that stood against us,” Ren said, his lips curling into a smile that made Hux’s blood run cold. Although Ren wasn’t the type of person that killed for sport or glory, he did find a degree of satisfaction in slaughtering those that opposed him.

It was one of the few things they had in common, Hux thought.

He nodded in acknowledgement. “Good.”

Hux returned to his reports. Ren’s long body had commandeered the sofa, so Hux simply stood there, his fingers deftly moving across the datapad as he checked the cost of repairing the Supremacy and compared it to the list of salvageable materials from it. Standing was no chore for Hux as he was used to long shifts standing on the bridge and he soon found himself naturally falling into his usual straight and stiff posture. Sofa or not, he had to get through this report.

“Isn’t this your rest cycle?”

Hux stopped reading about the loss of the Supremacy’s ion cannons but didn’t look up. “Since when do you pay attention to my rest schedule?”

Hux didn’t need to look to know that Ren was pouting; it was audible in his voice. “I do like to know what my Grand Marshal is doing. Occasionally.”

Grand Marshal. Hux had held that title for four weeks now and it still sent a shiver down his spine. He doubted hearing that title would ever lose its charm.. “I have a lot of work to do, Ren.”

“It can wait. Relax. Be a human being for once.”

This was one of those habits that Hux had not been able to break. Ren was surprisingly competent in a battle situation—his grasp of tactics and the way he motivated the troopers had been a pleasant discovery—but Ren’s behavior after a battle or during quiet times was infuriating. He thought nothing of disappearing for a few hours to sleep, meditate, train or do whatever else it was that Kylo Ren did when he switched his comm off. Hux didn’t have that luxury. For him, each meeting was followed by a different one, and each report needed an equally lengthy missive in response. Hux had no time to doze in his own quarters and Ren had never understood that.

“It can’t wait, Ren. It never can. The First Order doesn’t run itself.”

“So? Delegate. Get someone else to do some of it.”

“To whom? We lost most of our competent officers during the attack on the Supremacy.”

“That was months ago, Hux. Haven’t you been training people and promoting them every week? Shouldn’t they be ready to have more responsibility by now?”

By anyone else’s standards, they were ready and had been for weeks. But Hux wasn’t just anybody. He was the General who had stood and watched as Starkiller fell and the Supremacy was destroyed, and he was the Grand Marshal who was determined to ensure that something similar would never happen to the First Order again. The only way he could make sure that they were satisfactorily prepared was if he made sure of it himself.

Phasma had once said that he was too obsessed with control and that it would be his undoing. He hadn’t listened to her when she was alive, and he certainly wasn’t going to listen to her now that she wasn’t.

“Some things need my personal touch.”

“Like what? What are you reading right now?”

“A report on the Supremacy. We’ve been repairing it, but it may be more cost effective to scrap it and use the materials on a new Star Destroyer instead.”

“Remind me, Hux. When was the Supremacy destroyed?”

This time, Hux did tear his eyes away from his datapad and stared at Ren. He was still there, lying flat on the sofa with his long legs stretched out and looking impossibly powerful in his tightly fitted trousers. His head was propped up on a cushion—his hair fanning out beneath him—and his hands were resting gently on his stomach, rising and falling with every slow breath he took. It was hard to believe that the vision of peace that lay before Hux had been bathed in blood and tearing up a battlefield only hours before.

Ren always had been a study in contrasts.

“Six months ago. As you well know.”

“Exactly. That report has waited six months already. It won’t hurt if it waits six months and a day.”

“It’s not that simple—“

“Yes, it is. Those reports will still be there when your rest cycle ends. I’m asking you to relax, Hux. Don’t make me order you.”

That was another lesson that had been learnt the hard way after several weeks of arguments, bruises and deflected blaster shots. To begin with, Hux had resented and fought against every order Ren gave him. It had become a battle of wills for a time—one that Hux was sure he wouldn’t survive and wasn’t sure if he even wanted to—but Ren had eventually realized Hux’s usefulness and began to ask, instead of order. Hux had been wary at first and hadn’t trusted Ren’s change of heart, but the First Order flourished under their uneasy truce.

Then they started sleeping together. They could have killed each other a million times during the past couple of months but instead here Ren was, lying on Hux’s sofa and imploring him to take a break. It was almost like he cared. Hux tried not to think about how things had changed on a personal level and concentrated on the Order.

All of this—the truce with Ren and the nights he spent in his bed—were for the First Order, he told himself.

“Just let me finish this report and then I’ll take a break,” Hux said, offering a compromise. “I’ll be done in thirty minutes.”

Unfortunately, Kylo Ren had never been one for compromises. “No,” he said simply, dismissing Hux’s suggestion as if it had come from a cadet still in training instead of from his Grand Marshal.

Hux wanted to argue, but the feel of that familiar energy that could only come from Ren using the Force on him held his tongue. There had been a time when Hux didn’t notice Ren reaching out to him this way—one second they’d be arguing, and the next Hux would find himself flung into a wall or being choked. He didn’t know if he’d become more attuned to the Force (was that even possible?) or if Ren was being courteous enough to warn him first, but now he always felt the Force reaching out to him before anything happened.

It didn’t strike fear in him like it used to. Those first few weeks following the death of Snoke had been the most mentally exhausting of Hux’s life. He’d been in a constant state of awareness, always waiting for Ren to finally snap and kill him for being too defiant and not grovelling enough. He hid weapons everywhere, added an extra layer of security to his quarters and practically slept with one-eye open. He knew he was no match for Ren’s strength, Force, or sheer unpredictability, but that didn’t mean he was going to go down without a fight.

Now, the Force was no longer an unseen hand that threw him into walls or choked the breath out of him. Ren hadn’t used it against him in months. Instead, Ren used it _with_ him. It passed items to him when they were out of reach and Ren was too lazy to move. It warmed him up in the cold dead of space when he’d left his greatcoat in Ren’s quarters again.

Hux had never imagined that the Force could be used in such gentle ways.

Not by Kylo Ren.

And not on him.

That’s why he wasn’t scared now. Even when the Force wrapped around him, binding him until he couldn’t move and then started to pull him across the room, he didn’t feel scared.

When had a healthy and reasonable fear of Ren and his unpredictability turned into unshakeable trust?

Ren moved him slowly, lifting him off the ground and turning him until he was horizontal. The movement was very controlled and Hux relaxed into it, closing his eyes and welcoming the secure feel of Ren’s Force enfolding him. He knew that he couldn’t fight against Ren’s control of the Force and there was a strange comfort to be found in its unshakable strength. He even momentarily forgot his annoyance at Ren interrupting his work.

The movement finally stopped and Hux felt the Force flow away from him, leaving a chill in its wake. That chill quickly disappeared as the world around him came rushing back and he was surrounded by a different type of strength and energy.

One that was more directly Ren.

He was lying on the sofa, draped over Ren like a blanket that hadn’t been unfolded correctly. There was a heavy arm across his back that led to a big hand on his shoulder and another hand resting gently on his waist. Ren’s chest was solid but comfortable underneath his head and it barely registered when his datapad was plucked out of his hand and gently floated to his desk.

“That’s better,” Ren said, his voice rumbling through his chest in a way that Hux was certain he felt more than heard.

First they had been enemies, fighting each other for the favor of a Supreme Leader who had been using them both to cover up his own failings. Then they had been reluctant colleagues, trying to navigate the perils of leadership and compromise when they both only wanted to rule alone. Somehow they’d become lovers, finding common ground in each other’s bodies that helped them move forward together as the First Order’s new leadership. Now, they were something that Hux couldn’t label, something that allowed them to find peace and solace in each other.

Hux wanted to scream. This wasn’t them. Kylo Ren was not the kind of man who went to his lover’s quarters and fell asleep on his sofa instead of retiring to his own rooms. Hux didn’t neglect his reports in favor of listening to someone else breathe and gripping onto their shirt with fingers that should have been typing out orders.

Sex was one thing. But this was something entirely more real.

“Ren, let me go.”

It took Ren a few seconds to answer and when he did it was with a voice softer than Hux could have ever believed possible. “I'm not holding you down.”

Hux knew that, of course. He was more than aware that he was no longer under the influence of the Force, but that didn’t make it any easier to move. His datapad was mere meters away but it felt as far away as Arkanis. The longer he lay there, Ren’s hands acting as anchors that kept him grounded and secure, the harder it became to move. The Supremacy’s damage report hardly seemed to matter anymore.

Of course, a part of him was still screaming that lying there and relaxing into Ren’s powerful body was far more dangerous than any argument with the man had ever been. If he gave into this, it would destroy him in a manner that was more complete than any strike with a lightsaber ever could.

Ren really wasn’t holding him down. When Hux thought about it, he realized that he was still there because he wanted to be.

“It’s okay to stop, once in a while, Hux.”

“I suppose it is.”

Maybe giving in wasn’t so bad. Not all destruction was something that needed to be repaired.

**Author's Note:**

> This entire story was just an excuse to write a Kylux version of that [Burn This promo photo](https://www.instagram.com/p/BtBcHniF7_S/). That a plot and six months of backstory appeared around it is a huge surprise to me!
> 
> You can find me at [Twitter](https://twitter.com/rosensilence), [Tumblr](http://rosensilence.tumblr.com/) or [Dreamwidth](https://rosensilence.dreamwidth.org/).


End file.
